Front Matter (PDF) - Stanford University Press

Zohar ®rst made its appearance in Castile toward the end of the thirteenth
The
Passages from it are included in works by Castilian and Catalonian
century.
writingat about that time. In some cases these are presented as quotations,
kabbalists
attributed to ``Yerushalmi'' (usually referringto the Jerusalem Talmud,
sometimes also to other work originating in the Holy Land) or to Midrash,
but
``the Midrash of Rabbi Shim'on son of Yoḥai.'' Some refer to it as
particularly
ancient work. In other cases, including passages in the writings of wellknown
an
Castilian kabbalist Moses de LeoÂn and the Barcelona author Baḥya ben
pieces identical to sections of the Zohar are simply absorbed within
Asher,
writings and presented as their own. By the second decade of the four-
their
century, the Zohar is referred to (by the author of Tiqqunei Zohar) asa
teenth
or completed document. Large portions of it are by then available to
``prior''
authors as David ben Judah he-Ḥasid, who paraphrases and translates
such
sections, and the Italian kabbalist Menaḥem Recanati, who quotes
various
from the Zohar in his own commentary on the Torah. Recanati
copiously
to be the ®rst one to regularly refer to this group of sources by the
seems
Zohar.
term
question of the Zohar's origins has puzzled its readers ever since its
The
appearance, and no simple and unequivocal statement as to the question
®rst
its authorship can be made even in our own day. There is no question that
of
work was composed in the decades immediately precedingits appearance.
the
responds to literary works and refers to historical events that place it in the
It
following1270. The 1280s seem like the most likely decade for composition
years
of the main body of the Zohar, probably preceded by the Midrash ha-
and possibly certain other sections. Indeed it is quite possible that the
Ne'lam
was still an ongoing project when texts of it ®rst appeared, and that
Zohar
of it were beingwritten even a decade later. Because the question of the
parts
origins has been so hotly debated by readers and scholars over the
Zohar's
it is important to offer a brief account here of the history of this
centuries,
discussion.
about the Zohar's origins began in the very decade of its appearance.
Debate
of the Zohar were ®rst distributed by Rabbi Moses de LeoÂn, who
Fragments
that they were copied from an ancient manuscript in his possession.
claimed
was a classic technique of pseudepigraphy, the attribution of esoteric
This
to the ancients, to give them the respectability associated with hoary
teachings
While some naive souls seem to have believed quite literally in the
tradition.
of the text and the existence of such a manuscript, others, including
antiquity
of De LeoÂn's fellow kabbalists, joined with him in the pretense in order
some
Introduction
IV
l
heighten the prestige of these teachings. While they may have known that
to
LeoÂn was the writer, and may even have participated in mystical conversa-
De
tions that were re¯ected in the emerging written text, they did believe that the